


The Naming Ceremony

by bambirosesavage



Series: Yuri's Angels [4]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, Child Neglect, Established Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Family, Fluff, Foster Care, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, M/M, Married Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Past Child Abuse, Retired Victor Nikiforov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 03:13:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13731930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bambirosesavage/pseuds/bambirosesavage
Summary: It didn't happen quite the way Yuuri or Viktor expected, but the little family grows stronger.





	The Naming Ceremony

Sweat dripped down between Yuuri’s shoulder blades and soaked into his shirt at the small of his back. The chill of the air conditioning and the ice dried it in place. The clinging shirt was a bit uncomfortable, but he was used to it. Now that it was December, he was training harder than ever to get ready for his upcoming competition in February. Viktor was still tweaking his choreography to make it the best it could be, but for the most part, everything was decided.

  
“You’re late!” Viktor yelled as Yuuri zipped past his usual spot on the side of the rink.

  
“Late!” Yuri chirruped, smacking his little hands on the barrier.

  
As exhausted as he was, Yuuri had to smile. The little boy was truly getting comfortable with the couple now. He was talking more and more. His smiles were less hesitant and his eyes more trusting. He accepted their hugs and kisses without confusion or complaint. He had even gained a few pounds. It was wonderful.

  
“Not bad,” Viktor said as Yuuri finished his routine and skated over to his husband. “You’re still taking too long to go into the second flip. If you try to fly through it, you will land on your face in front of everyone and make me sad.”

  
Yuuri snorted. “I wouldn’t want that.”

  
“No,” Viktor agreed without a hint of sarcasm. “I do hate to be sad.”

  
“No sad,” Yuri chimed in. He wriggled down from Viktor’s arms and picked something up. “Here.” He held out Yuuri’s water bottle to him. “Has drink now.”

  
“Thank you for taking such good care of me, Yura. You’re such a sweet boy.”

  
“I know,” the boy answered, making his foster parents laugh.

  
The rest of the afternoon passed the way they usually did with Viktor coaching from the side of the ice or coming into the rink to show Yuuri what he needed to fix. Yuri spent his time playing on the floor and watching the men skate. Finally, the practice came to an end, at least for Yuuri.

  
“Me!” Yuri screeched. He hopped up and don as Yuuri skated off the ice to change out of his sweaty clothes. “My skate! It my turn now. I go skate now.”

  
“Yes, angel,” Viktor agreed. “Let’s put your skates on, and you can have a turn.” He turned to Yuuri, who already had gotten the boy’s tiny white skates out of the gym bag. “Thank you, my love. Sit down, Yura. I’ll help you with the laces.”

  
Just like many of the aspects of their lives, time spent at the ice rink was carefully scheduled to accommodate Yuri’s interests. The trio arrived early every morning before Yuri was truly awake to begin training. Yuuri and Viktor worked from 6 to 12:30. On some days, depending on what he had accomplished, Yuuri would stay behind to continue working with Yakov while Viktor took the toddler home for lunch and a nap. No matter what though, Yuri got to skate for half an hour if he had behaved himself during Yuuri’s practice.

  
While Viktor got the child into the skates, Yuuri hurried to shower and change into fresh clothes. Both men taught Yuri to skate, but Yuuri had to admit Viktor was better suited to the task. As the more patient and the calmer of the pair, Viktor was an excellent teacher and coach. Yuri was an enthusiastic student, but as a stubborn three-year-old, he was easily frustrated when he didn’t get to do what he wanted. By the time Yuuri returned from the showers, the little boy was whining to Viktor about something.

  
“I want! Me go fast!”

  
“Not yet, angel,” Viktor responded as calm as ever. “You have to go slow before you can go fast.”

  
“Are you being good?” Yuuri called across the ice as he slipped his skates back on to join his family.

  
“Yes!” Yuri answered, still pouting.

  
“Because you know what happens when you choose not to be good,” Yuuri continued. “We go home and don’t skate anymore, don’t we?”

  
“Me being good,” Yuri insisted. Yuuri looked to Viktor for confirmation.

  
“He’s fine. He wants to skate like you do. He wants to spin.”

  
“All flash and no substance.” Yuuri grinned. “I wonder where he gets that from.”

  
“It must be Yakov,” Viktor suggested, flipping his hair back dismissively.

  
“Oh, yes, of course,” Yuuri laughed. “Yakov’s so flashy.”

  
“Hey.” Yuri tugged at Viktor’s pant leg. “Skate more? We not done.”

  
“Yes.” The coach ran his hand over the top of Yuri’s sleek hair with a smile. “You’re right, as always. Let’s show my Yuuri what you can do.” He took Yuri’s hand and skated a few feet away from Yuuri. Yuri’s first few steps were hesitant as he left the safety Viktor’s hand provided, but he grew more confident with every gliding step.

  
Yuuri squatted down, a huge smile on his face. When they had first started teaching Yuri, the boy didn’t skate so much as shuffle around on the ice. It was cute, his little penguin way of skating, but he didn’t get anywhere very fast. Those days seemed to be behind the child now. His steps were longer, faster, more like real skating.

  
Yuri’s smile was the biggest Yuuri had ever seen it when he skated straight into his foster parent’s open arms. “Hi.”

  
Yuuri pressed a big kiss to the toddler’s cheek. “Hi! Yuri, that was amazing! You did it all by yourself, didn’t you? That’s so cool!”

  
“Go again?”

  
“Yes!” Yuuri swept the boy’s hair back. “Go skate back to Viktor.”

  
The boy did what he was told, shuffling around in a circle to skate awkwardly over to the coach. Viktor grinned as he glided backward away from Yuri, forcing the child to skate farther than before to reach him.

  
“You’re getting good at this, angel!” he praised.

  
“Yeah.” The little boy’s smile was infectious. Yuri skated back and forth across the ice between them. With every pass he made, the men skated a little farther back to give the boy more room to practice. Yuri wobbled every once in a while but didn’t fall over.

  
“We really should get going,” Yuuri reminded his husband as Yuri skated away from him once again. “It’s getting late. If we want to have lunch and get someone down for his nap on time, we need to head home soon.”

  
“Yes, yes. You’re right,” Viktor agreed. He held out his arms to the boy. “Come on. My Yuuri’s ready to go home.”

  
“No,” Yuri whined. “Not done. Go more. Go more now, okay?”

  
“Aren’t you hungry? It’s lunchtime.”

  
“Five more minute.”

  
Viktor sighed and looked over at his husband. Yuuri knew what he was going to say before he said it. “I think we can five more minutes, don’t you?”

  
Yuuri rolled his eyes, but couldn’t keep the smile off his face. “Five more minutes seems fair.”

“Okay, angel. You have five minutes.”

  
“He is really improving, isn’t he?” Yuuri asked when Viktor joined on the side of the ice. He slipped his hand into his husband’s and watched the toddler scoot around clumsily along the edge of the rink. Viktor’s hand was only slightly larger than his, but soft and warm against his own cold skin. Viktor squeezed his hand.

  
“He’s going to be an Olympian,” the coach declared.”In twelve years, when you’re old and retired, and I’m still beautiful and recognized on a daily basis-”

  
Yuuri pinched him.

  
“Yuri’s going to be on the podium,” he continued. “He’s a little star.”

  
“He is a star,” Yuuri agreed. “I’m glad we’ve found something he likes to do. I like bringing him to work with us, too. I’d hate to have to drop him off at daycare or leave him with a babysitter every day.”

  
Viktor nodded, not taking his eyes off the boy.

  
“Although,” Yuuri went on, “daycare might not be such a bad idea.”

  
Viktor tore his eyes away from the ice. “What do you mean? You just said you like having him here with us.”

  
“I know. I do,” Yuuri said quickly, “but he’s never around any other children. He’s the only child we have. None of our friends in Russia have kids. Even when he was living with his mother, he was the only child of an only child.”

  
“You’re an only child,” Viktor pointed out.

  
“Yeah, but I had cousins and other friends my own age when I was a kid. I love having him with us so much, but he’s never going to learn to make friends with other children if we don’t give him the chance to try to be social.”

  
“Yura is absolute perfection, but I don’t think he’s much of a social butterfly, my love.”

  
“We don’t know that, though,” Yuuri argued.

  
“So what are you saying?” Viktor asked. “You want him to go to daycare?”

  
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Yuuri shrugged. “Maybe it would be good for him. He could make some friends. Learn how to share his toys. How to get along with other people.”

  
“We can teach him that.”

  
Yuuri squeezed Viktor’s hand. “It’s not the same, and you know it. I’m not saying he should go every day. I don’t think I could take it; I would miss him too much to do that, but maybe once or twice a week. Or, we could put him in a skating class. The baby class offered here is the same age as him. He could go to that instead if you don’t want to do daycare.”

  
Viktor squinted his eyes as he thought, and Yuuri knew he wasn’t happy with those options. “I don’t know. I like having him here. I want him to be with us.”

  
“I know, darling. I want that, too, but we have to think of what’s best for him. We can’t be so selfish.”

  
“We let him spend time with Yakov,” Viktor argued.

  
Yuuri laughed. “Yakov isn’t a child! And we’re there with Yakov. That doesn’t count.”

  
“No, maybe it doesn’t,” allowed the coach. “I just don’t like the idea of leaving him with a stranger. What if he doesn’t like them? Or they don’t like him? What if he thinks we left him there and that we don’t love him anymore?”

  
“I understand what you’re saying, but-”

  
_Smack._

  
Both men whipped their heads around to see Yuri lying flat on the ice in the middle of the rink. The boy raised himself onto his hands and knees and felt his lip before he started to scream. Viktor and Yuuri were frozen for a second, shocked.

  
“Papa!” Yuri wailed, reaching out to the couple.

  
The name broke the men out of their trance, and they raced to Yuri’s side. The boy had never called them by anything other than their names before, and while being called by something more familial was a dream for both of them, they never tried to push the child to call them anything he didn’t want to. However, the novelty of the name was overshadowed by the emergency of the situation.

  
“You’re okay, baby,” Yuuri cooed loudly over the echo of Yuri’s tears. The skater scooped up the boy and held him close, trying to comfort him while Viktor tried to check him for injuries.

  
“His lip is bleeding,” the coach said, pushing Yuri’s long hair away from his face to get a better look.

  
“Did he bust it?”

  
“No, I don’t think so. It looks like he just bit it when he fell.”

  
“My poor baby angel.” Yuuri hugged the child tightly and kissed his head as Yuri continued to sob. “Did you bite your lip? Slipping like that must have been scary, huh?”

  
Yuri nodded miserably and buried his face in Yuuri’s neck, leaving a tiny smear of blood on the man’s shirt as he turned his head.

  
Yuuri rocked him back and forth to calm him down while Viktor contented himself with rubbing his back. The coach grinned at him over Yuri’s blond head. “Papa,” he mouthed.

  
Yuuri smiled back. “I know.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yuri ends up calling Viktor Papa and Yuuri my Papa. They assume Yuuri gets the possessive pronoun on his name since Viktor always called him "my Yuuri" or "my love." 
> 
> Sorry this fic is so short!. I wanted to establish what Yuri calls each parent before going on to the next, longer story. I did consider having him call one of them Papa and the other one Daddy, but that didn't feel right since Daddy is an English word and Yuri doesn't speak any English. Yes, Yuuri could teach him to call him that, but that option doesn't seem at all organic to me, so we have Papa and my Papa instead.
> 
> Let me know what you think in the comments or contact me on Tumblr at bambirosesavage!


End file.
